Resumen

CASTRO, JOSÉ ESTEBAN. El estudio interdisciplinario de los conflictos por el agua en el medio urbano: una contribución desde la sociología. CDC [online]. 2007, vol.24, n.66, pp.21-46. ISSN 1012-2508.

This paper is the result of research on water conflicts recorded in Mexico’s urban centres since the 1980s: from peaceful demands for essential water services addressed to the authorities to violent actions involving the destruction of water infrastructures and armed confrontations between the security forces and the population. In the prevailing explanations, water conflict is often reduced to its technological and administrative dimensions, at the same time that the process becomes depoliticised and its social character is displaced from the centre of the analysis. This work proposes a conceptual framework that aims at overcoming this reductionism and facilitating new forms of coordination between the techno-natural and social disciplines in order to rigorously capture the multidimensionality of the relevant processes in Latin America.

Palabras clave : Water struggle; Environmental injustice; Social inequality; Urban conflicts; interdisciplinarity; Mexico.